Dragoljub Šarović For me they are often parts of the same challenge. If I want to solve a problem it is important that I can imagine both the problem and possible solutions. To use my imagination is to see something in my head. Creativity is for me also a more reflective activity where I try to play with possible solutions. The activity of creativity can be thought of as part imagination, part reflection, part mental experimentation and often part trying to make the solutions happen.
In the process of creativity, we first imagine, then we can create something..... sometimes it can be linear process, sometimes it is cyclical, overlapping...
I think they are different each other in point of existing. Because when you image, you build your ideas on existing, but in creativity you have to produce all stages of thing that you formed.
Creativity and imagination are not the same thing.
The words “creativity” and “imagination” are often used interchangeably, but they aren't the same thing. You can have a great imagination and not be creative. Imagination is where ideas begin. Imagination is the ability to think of things that don't already exist
Imagination can be part of the Creative Process and Creativity can inspire the imagination.
So they are not the same but are interlinked.
Creativity and imagination are connected but seem to perform different functions in very different ways. Whilst most imaginative thinking involves cognitively fabricating ideas, ‘creating’ mental material so to speak, it may not necessarily be creative in the sense that these cerebral performances have applicability. I’d say that this is perhaps the difference between the two: imagination is the production of ideas - but these might be unrealistic, emotional or incoherent, whereas creativity produces ideas which can be applied to the world in some way, and realised materially, organisationally or intellectually.
Imagination is a very underestimated skill that is a key part of our existence. It is so central to our perceptual experience that usually we are not in a position to be objectively aware of its functioning. Humanity is not alone in this attribute. Many creatures evidence imagination, for example dogs commonly dream, an imaginative act wherein mental constructs are cerebrally formed and extrapolated, even resulting in physical response such as increased heart rate and movement. Despite the common domestic evidence of these imaginative states, canines clearly exhibit a limited creativity which at best deals with the immediate.
The value of human imagination cannot be overstated, and drives our social, cultural and technological development. The ability to imagine forms the core of our social cognition and gives rise to our social structures. It enables the individual to project probabilistic Theory of Mind, mental attribution and expected behaviours for persons and things around them. It enables us to understand, to some extent, what is going on in the minds of others. Society relies on such imaginative constructs as they form the basis for behavioural ethics, dependent upon which are commerce and legality. These imaginative skills are unfortunately not completely universal, and individuals suffering Asperger’s or Autism often find it difficult if not impossible to attribute imagined mental states to others that are any different to their own. This suggests a concomitant inhibition in the ability to create imaginative constructs which complexly synthesise rather than simply replicate data.
You yourself exercised an imaginative act when to posted this topic imagining that elsewhere there may be others who could offer different, perhaps useful, viewpoints on the question. This skill in imagining different potential states of existence and knowledge is part of the common ability to action plan tasks and manage projects, since these rely on the ability to conceptualise an as yet unrealised original goal and to ‘backward engineer’ the steps needed to achieve it. Perhaps this is where imagination and creativity meet. Creativity is imagination which produces outcomes whether these outcomes are material, organisational or conceptual. They may be used by the individual or transmitted to others. For example, whilst the act of writing merely uses language that is commonly available, creativity will enable an individual to order language units - words - to communicate not just a clause sequence conveying a narrative but a text which communicates something new, transformative information or data that perhaps more clearly represents some aspect of the human experience. I’d argue that creativity is expressive imagination - it can be meaningfully conveyed to others to materially alter actions, organisation and cognition.
An assumption that seems to have been made about the question is that the words, and perhaps more particularly the word creativity, is to be interpreted as being intended to mean human-creativity, as opposed for example to creativity in general, or creativity in the sense of nature's evolutionary mutations, or for the theologians among us, of Creation in the religious sense. This wider sense of the word changes the meaning of the question somewhat, potentially yielding some interesting unexplored areas of opinion and perspective that might be worth examining. The fact that mind became part of modern philosophy as result of a deliberate project on the part of Rene Descartes to do away with the necessity of a creative God could be interpreted as suggesting that the interlinking of the ideas of creativity and imagination might be rooted in this kind of displacement of the deity. And yet Descartes' Rationalist proposition cogito ergo sum is not a creative production principle as some Idealists might like to interpret it as. Certainly, definitions that treat imagination as creativity that is not manifest in the world are one way of distinguishing between the two terms, but equally one can regard the Cartesian move as discrete and contingent, with other interpretations of the location and interrelation of mind and world being open for consideration.
Are creativity and imagination the same thing? What an interesting question. In my mind, imagination is the ability of a person to visualize something. It may be something new, it may be something that has never before existed in the world! Or one can do thought experiments that begin with imagining something very ordinary. Creativity is where the duct tape hits the cardboard, by contrast. It's the hands-on problem solving in the moment. Imagination lays the groundwork for the vision you are trying to achieve, and creativity cobbles things together to make the vision into a reality.
Dear colleagues,
A friend of mine told me: I exactly know what is creativity end imagination, but If one ask me I don't know. Magnificent answer.
To Mr. Maximilian Herbert,
Yes, very important thing is relation between evolutionary creativity and imagination. Does in Nature act some sort of imagination maybe similar with our imagination? If our personal imagination are only one aspect of imagination acting through the Nature, does such imagination could be base of evolutionary activity in the Nature?
They are distinct notions, but a creative process needs a bit of imagination as oil in an engine. Creativity requires methods to help imagination be consistent and coherent. However, imagination is free from creativity, while it is not systematically, although it might, be subordinated to a creative process. Imagine first create after.
Imagination can lack creativity, reason or use in life. Creativity combines imagination and the processing and production of ideas into solving a problem in an excellent manner.
What is about creative imagination of poets, artists, composers? For me, imagination and creativity are like two pistons of the same motor.
Imagination is like dreaming, everyone has it. Creativity can be measured, after all, if there will be a product after the process. Process without a product is like child's play - dreaming without fulfilling something...
Not all imagination creativity ... but all creativity includes imagination
According to Runco and Pina (2013), creativity and imagination are related, because both involve thought that is to some extent deprived of reality. But creativity is more connected with reality than imagination. Imagination can be considered as the ability to go beyond the objective world. Imagination can therefore encourage creativity, though creativity requires more than the ability to go beyond reality. Creativity also requires the criterion of appropriateness or utility.
Creativity is the ability to see the future and translate it at least partially into the present. The future transcends the present. To be able to imagine it certainly needs a developed imagination. However, imagination itself does not provide creativity, as it can be the imagination of anything, including something unrelated to the future. Thus creativity without imagination is impossible, and imagination is possible without creativity
Творчество - это способность видеть будущее и переводить его хотя бы частично в настоящее. Будущее выходит за пределы настоящего. Чтобы иметь возможность его представить безусловно необходимо развитое воображение. Однако воображение само по себе не обеспечивает творчества, так как может быть воображением чего угодно, в том числе чего-то не связанного с будущим. Таким образом творчество без воображения невозможно, а воображение возможно и без творчества
No! Closely related but we see imagination as one of five inter-related creative habits of mind:
Article A Five Dimensional Model of Creativity and its Assessment in Schools
Article PROGRESSION IN STUDENT CREATIVITY IN SCHOOL: FIRST STEPS TOW...
Dear Bill Lucas ,
Thank you for sharing these articles.
Best regards,
Dragoljub
Imagination usually pertains to a wild thought or dreaming process as to what may be possible without any concrete evidence. Creativity is having some sense of how one is going to proceed with an idea and making it happen, often involving thinking "outside the box" and sometimes breaking conventional norms. The late Zaha Hadid who designed and built a huge skyscraper in Miami, FL, USA, with an undulating exoskeleton feature is a fine example of someone with creativity
It is impossible to determine where imagination ends and where creativity begins.
That is similar to question: Does the fish to half in the water or the water to half in the fish?
The conceptualization and measurements have overlaps, as provided by:
Kaufman, J. C. (2012). Counting the muses: development of the Kaufman domains of creativity scale (K-DOCS). Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 6(4), 298.
and
Sheehan, P. W., McConkey, K. M., & Law, H. G. (1978). Imagery facilitation and performance on the creative imagination scale. Journal of Mental Imagery.
Creativity is putting to practice that which you have imagined.
Imagination leads to creativity though it is not all your imaginative ideas that can turn to reality by being creative.
Creativity is hard to pin down precisely, it's generally considered as the ability to create something using the imagination. Creativity is the act of creating something in the real world, while imagination deals with 'unreal' thoughts that are free from the confines of reality. Creativity is defined by psychological scientists as the generation of ideas or products that are both original and valuable. Creativity relies on imagination, the conscious representation of what is not immediately present to the senses. (Authentic Happiness, Penn University)
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